Hancom Linux recentlyannounced
that the Korean government has procured 120,000 copies ofHancomLinux
Deluxe 2.0, which includes, among other things, KDE 2 andHancom Office.
This means that many more office workers will soon be using KDE for their daily
productivity. The government, which will migrate the equivalent of 23% of the
annual Microsoft Windows based PC procurement, is quoted as estimating that
they will "save 80% of what an equivalent purchase of Microsoft products
would have cost." See also the stories atSlashdot andthe Register.
Way to go, Hancom!

>Re: KDE Studio Gold
>by Carbon on Thursday January 25, @11:13PM
>
>Er, what I meant by what do you think of k3studio, I meant it's flowcharting
>capabilities compared to kivios, and what you think of it's recently added
>ability to import kivio stencils.

Answer of theKompany's president :

>Re: KDE Studio Gold
>by Shawn Gordon on Thursday January 25, @11:33PM
>
>Wow, didn't even notice they had put either one of those features in. Too bad
>they wasted the time with the Kivio stencils since that isn't the final
>format and the data is copywritten.

Not really the friendly remark.
OTOH, - I hope this is not too much of a taboo to say it - all commercial Kivio editions as well as KDEStudios are still GPLed software (merely because *was* GPLed is a wording that GPL denies).
So even if theKompany seems to feel very uncomfortable now with the GPL, they may consider importation/exportation to KOffice as a logical consequence of things past ?... I don't know.

Good news !
Massive governments adoption is definetly Linux's best chance...
They simply hate to rely on Microsoft...

France is also pretty close to make the move (foreign affairs ministry as already jumped). It was stated several time by government representatives that Free software's philosophy was "very close" to the republic's ideals (liberty, equality, fraternity).

In the vast majority of countries, if you bring free software in the government, you bring it at school. And if you bring it at school, you most certainly bring it at home.
Thus if free software is gaining approval of it's desktop environments and office applications, the next step is obviously somewhere near http://edu.kde.org...
That is : good and numerous educational software.

At least in Korea, this may be the proverbial spark that will lighten the Linux revolution (ahem, excuse the pathos *sniff*). Seriously, this is probably the biggest deal for Linux since IBM joined the boat. What is essential now is that HancomOffice is actually better or at least as good as Microsoft Office (I am certain that KDE itself is fairly well-suited for the job). If productivity analysis will reveal the decision to be economically sane, much larger installations in Korea will likely follow, and the Korea case will be one that will be analyzed carefully by all countries thinking about moving to Linux. Too bad OpenOffice can't play the role of Hancom yet, I would prefer an open-source office solution, and I know that OpenOffice will eventually be good, whereas I don't know if HancomOffice is good.

Ok ... Will the mass be using the broken clipboard in KDE 2 where there is no paste over select? Imagine the tech support call from 120,000 users trying to copy a URL from KMail, and paste it in Konqueror.

Right on time as well, with so many GNOME Office reaching 1.0 status lately. For a moment there I thought they were going to overtake KDE. Unfortunately (that is, IMHO), Hancom office isn't free software. It would be really nice if more people would help improve KOffice instead of adding more eye candy to kde-core etc.

I really don't see this as a troll. In fact I think that this attitude is essential for me continue to be interested in Linux.

I use Open Source / Free Software because I think it's a good thing--that's why I develop it too. I don't just use Unix, I use GNU/Linux because I like being able to hack on the things that I use. I'm glad that KDE is getting some attention out of this, but I wouldn't really be that excited if it were an announcement like "120,000 computer have switched to Solaris." If really don't see a lot of reason to be excited about a group switching from relying on one proprietary system to another. I think a lot of the excitement around this has mostly just been spite towards Microsoft.

So, some clarification: I don't hate closed source software, companies or people including Hancom, theKompany, Trolltech, Sun or Microsoft. I just don't see anything special about people relying on closed source software. That's what they've been doing for the last 40 years. In fact I think that all of these companies have done some good things, including making some great contributions to Open Source.

I guess I don't want to see Linux become "just another platform." Linux is defined by its idealogical roots and I hope it sticks to those. Linux isn't as much a commercial competitor to Windows as it is an idealogical competitor and I think the latter is more important. It seems that this recent event was mostly a commercial win for Linux. So hopefully this will cause plurality in the desktop market, but even more I hope that it's a stepping stone to moving to a truely Free platform.

Blah, blah blah you Richard Stallman Limmings all sound the same. Group think is all ways a bad thing. Time to group up people and think out side the box. Going from one slavery to another is not an answer. Just ask the Russians circa 1920s.

I think closed source software could potentially be acceptable, but I don't want to deal with it and really don't care about it. So I guess I have a passive dislike for proprietary software--I just don't care about it--whereas the FSF has an active dislike.

Oh, and another point. Groups that think alike are great. Groups that collectively don't think are bad.

Methinks too many Linux newbies have forgotten that Linux isn't just another platform (and ignore why Linux exists in the firstplace). And a couple of them have decided to troll here [slaps own hand for responding to trolls].

Right on time as well, with so many GNOME Office reaching 1.0 status lately. For a moment there I thought they were going to overtake KDE. Unfortunately (that is, IMHO), Hancom office isn't free software. It would be really nice if more people would help improve KOffice instead of adding more eye candy to kde-core etc.

IMHO, GNOME is not the enemy, GNOME is free software and I wish them well. The enemy is micro$oft and their dirty monopolic tricks. I currently use KDE, but I would like to see GNOME grow stronger too.

No, to further clarify, the enemy is closed source software, and in particular closed source software that hurts the software industry (and thus, computer science in general). If M$ open sourced all their apps tomorrow, they would become pretty popular with me. I still wouldn't use their software unless it became much better (UNIX just has a better design, imho) but that would help everyone in general.

Sheesh, M$ would still make a killing doing tech support, certification, and selling copies of the manual to OEMs, not to mention their game console, various perhiperals, and other misc. stuff.

KDE isn't really about competiton anyways. Ask any developer (btw, I'm not a developer personally, beyond submitting a few bug reports, but I hang out in #kde occasionally) and they'll probably tell you a few of :

- Because coding is fun
- Because I want to help UNIX become a better desktop platform
- Because I wanted a particular feature that was missing, and just plain added it myself

They'll hardly be using KDE for their daily productivity. While they may be using Konqueror to waste time here and there, it seems obvious that they are going to be using Hancom's products for their work. That'w why it was bought.

Hard to call it a blow for freedom when the centerpiece of the purchase is no more free than Microsoft Office.

No, it's slightly more free. The doc specs are less of a moving target, making filters a good option. Besides, it's freer then Microsoft Office because it uses components (Linux, X Free, etc) that are free, at least in the Linux version.

I'm *really* happy to hear those good news, since I wish your company all the best. I also really have no problem with many of your products being closed-source, since we all know you need to make some money.

What I'd like to know is whether HancomOffice's file-format is "open" or not. They don't seem to mention that on their website, and although HancomOffice's file-formats probably weren't your decision, I thought you might know.

Shawn,
Normally, you are very good about handling questions conerning what is going on (I think that you get too much into with the trolls, but that is a different matter). But asking about the file formats of hancom is NOT a troll. I asked over on LT and I see others asking here. Is Hancom a closed format? If so, will Hancom be opening the format soon? If not, why?

sorry, I've been very busy lately and haven't been on the dot in some time.

I don't know what Hancom is going to do with their file formats, or what they look like. My concern is over my 4 applications in the suite at the moment, and there is nothing special about our file formats, it's not like with Presenter, Sheet and Word.

So I can't answer the question - send an email to Hancom and ask them about it directly - and if you need an answer from me, it is better to send me an email if you want to make sure to get a response. I try to keep up on these talkbacks, but it isn't always easy